


As the Warped Vines Tangle

by WordStorm



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Teitovar ir Kruinbor
Genre: Coming of Age, Consensual Possession, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Respawn Mechanics, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27187211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordStorm/pseuds/WordStorm
Summary: The coming-of-age of the young Xevar that would become Teithor Morevel, and what happens the first time they meet the powerful entity that dwells within every Warped Forest in the nether variant known as Xokror...A more detailed third-person account of part of the third portion of The Tale of a Wraith.
Kudos: 7





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Xevar = KSEH-vahr, plural is Xevarin (kseh-VAHR-een)  
> "Why do you say the main character's name is Teithor but don't ever call them that in this story?" - Because they weren't called Teithor yet at this point. Why they change their name is revealed in The Tale of a Wraith, Teithor's autobiography.

Every Xevar knows where the core of their forest is. Every Xevar can feel the power emanating from that thickest tangling of fungal trees, the pulsing heartbeat of their homes. Every Xevar meets that heart once in their life.   
It is a rite of passage; survive alone in the forest core for three cycles with only what you can carry in a single satchel. Youths spend cycles and cycles planning and preparing for this journey of self and survival. The oldest and most traditional final test, and if a youth was able it was expected. There were no exceptions should the youth in question be a Worldwalker.   
The black-haired Xevar standing at the gate of their home citadel let out a slow breath, hiking their satchel further up their shoulder. Their tail lashed behind them, the only sign of nervousness they would let themself show. They would do fine. They were prepared, and the Council of clanheads wouldn’t have decreed their test if they weren’t ready.   
Nylium and netherrack crunched underfoot as they strode away from the palisade and into the shadow of the forest. They did not look back. They knew their way. If they did as well as they hoped they would, the hardest part would be finding their way home.  
Compared to the lively bustle of the citadel, the wild Warped Forest was eerily silent. They didn’t mind at first, humming a silent tune to the steady beat of their footsteps. An Enderman warbled behind them and they half-turned, keeping their eyes low as they broke off their mental hum to return the greeting.  
“ _What are you doing, Traveller?”_  
_“I am to become an adult, Longstrider. I must go to the core and return in three cycles.”_ They weren’t sure if the Enderman was one of those who frequented an area around the citadels, or if they would need to explain further…  
The Enderman warbled a sound that was not words but understanding nonetheless. _“Fortune of the Void upon you, Traveller.”_  
_“And blessings of Blue and Green to you, Longstrider.”_  
Purple particles fall before their sight as the Enderman teleports away, a block of nylium in grasp. They lift their head again and continue walking. They don’t remember the tune they’d been silently humming before, so they summon up another to ward off the distracted thoughts the silence would bring. Warped Forests may not be as overtly dangerous as Crimson, but distraction could still be just as deadly.  
They walked and rested and walked again, alert for any change in their surroundings that wasn’t simple terrain. A breeze whipped up, trying in vain to ruffle their tightly-bound hair. They flared their filter-gills against the influx of particles, stopping for a moment to bask in the fresh heat the breeze had picked up from a nearby lava lake.   
Energised by the breeze, they picked up their pace…generally it took both halves of a full cycle to reach the core, not counting sleep. Perhaps they could get there quicker? Ever since Siluris returned from her test, they’d been infinitely curious as to what the core looked like, what it felt like, what it sounded like. Siluris had always been good at explaining things, but even she had trouble describing the core. Perhaps it would inspire them? That would be fun.  
As the peaceful half of the cycle wore on, they started looking for a place to hide so they could sleep some of the hostile half away safely. A tiny nook just barely big enough to fit them and perhaps a little fire proved the place to go; they cornered themself in with some netherrack from beside it and settled down. They still had plenty of the rations they’d packed, so they munched on some of those as they sat in the dark, slowly relaxing.  
_**Blood and heartbeat pounding in their ears. A cacophony of deafening silence. The ring of blade against blade against blade. The sweet burn of adrenaline and purely physical exhaustion. A trail of crimson steaming on the soul soil floor. The feral grimacing grin of bloodlust. Was it on their face or another’s?**_  
_**The peace of a magma shore bordering a forest. Shattered peace of a palisade burning blue and red, ghast balls crashing into houses and throwing limbs and furniture every which way. Countless faces staring glassy-eyed at a crumbling netherrack ceiling. And still they lived. And still they walked. And still they breathed. Their blades gleamed dark and dripping. Their grapple-tips stained with silvery ghast blood as they snagged yet another and brought it down, arrow after arrow piercing its hide until its cries were silenced. Their hands coated with more types of gore than they could identify. They could kill all they pleased, but that would not bring back the ones they could not save.**_  
_**Bubbling lava closing over their head, their sight turning to gold and then black as they could not summon the energy to swim. The ceiling of their bedroom. The rush of wind past their face, the end of a broken grapple-rope in their grip. The ceiling of their bedroom. The piercing jolt of a skeleton’s arrow through their neck. The ceiling of their bedroom. The ceiling of their bedroom. The ceiling of their bedroom.**_  
They awoke with a silent gasp, tears streaming down their face and the dream already fading. They caught their breath and wiped the tears away. Why had they been crying? Why were they awake? They drifted off to sleep again, a gentle humming on the barest, faintest sliver of the edge of their hearing.  
_**The peace of a magma shore bordering a forest. Voices of children playing among the vines. The bubbling of potions brewing. Sheafs of paper rustling in the dimness of a single fire. Quiet singing swelling to a chorus. Cycle after cycle after cycle after cycle. Faces smiling and speaking and arguing and making up and laughing and singing and living. The gentle glow of a shroomlight surrounded by fungus. The slow sway of vines in a hot breeze.**_  
Proper consciousness returned slowly, with still no memory of the earlier nightmare. They shook themself the rest of the way awake and ate some more of their rations before digging away the netherrack blocking them in their little nook. Time to continue their journey.   
As the youth strode, jogged, climbed, and swung their way deeper and deeper into the forest, they did whatever they could to keep their mind in the present and to not get distracted from their goal. They fought off anything that attacked them and politely greeted each Enderman that warbled in their direction. At one point they nearly lost their footing and satchel to an ill-timed ghastball, but a desperate and well-timed sword-swipe knocked the projectile back.  
And all that time, an odd feeling lingered in the back of their mind, quiet whispers beckoning and curious.

* * *

The Warped Forest Core hummed to itself as the newest youths taking their Trial Journey through its forests grew steadily closer and closer. All of them held the usual feeling of fright-nerves-curiosity-determination-stubbornness, but there was one…there was one that was _unusual_. The Core knew the ritual of the Trial Journeys better than these mortals knew breathing by this point…yet it wasn’t often that it felt a youth that held a different kind of potential. A kind of potential that it could…perhaps… _grasp_.   
If it was remembering right, and it never remembered wrong, the last youth to come to it with that particular kind of potential had been able to carry it alongside their own mind for a time…and it had been so long since the Core had felt the sensations of a physical form. Time was not well-measured in the Deep Nether, but the Core remembered, and even unmeasured time could drag on and on and on and on.   
So as the youths - especially the Different One - drew nearer and nearer to where it was nestled in each of their individual forests, the Core waited and pondered.

* * *

What was that? Who else was out there? Their eyes narrowed, their steps stilling as they listened. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been an Enderman… _nothing_ came this close to the nest of the Core. Their tail lashed side-to-side in agitation and their ears flattened back alongside their head; they knew they were being watched, but was it real? They’d already almost found themself following an almost-translucent something off a ledge twice now, and the whispers in the back of their mind wouldn’t leave them alone. At this point they just wanted to know what the whispers were saying.   
Everything felt fuzzy and vague now, but they knew it was all in their head. They knew they’d reached the most dangerous part of their trek, and vigilance was even more important than if they were in a soulsand valley during the hostile half of a cycle. They’d heard what the Forest Core could do, how it could twist and, well…warp the senses and mind, make reality seem to crumble…  
They didn’t have to go any further; this was close enough by the rules of the Trial. All they had to do now was spend at least a half-cycle and then they could begin the walk home. They didn’t have to follow the whispers and gentle humming. But they were curious, and they wanted to know. And there was something so bone-deep _familiar_ about the voices in a way they couldn’t place.  
They tightened the strap of their satchel across their chest and loosened their daggers in their sheaths, taking a slow, measured breath. The sense of strangeness shivered up their spine, something so familiar and utterly unknown at the same moment lingering in their senses. They could stop. Most people would…most people went no farther. … _How did they know that?_  
It didn’t matter what most people did. What mattered was what they did. This was their Trial, not anyone else’s. They could perform it as they pleased. They stepped forward. 

* * *

The Core thrummed with amusement-pleasure-curiosity as the Different Youth passed the threshold of where its influence was the strongest. It turned its attention from the other youths in its forests - they would get an easier Trial than others, but it truly cared not - and focused its senses on the Different One.  
A small animal’s eyes glowed bright cyan, warped vines tangling gently around its limbs as it lent the Core its sight. Where…there. The animal leapt to a different branch, the vines detaching from the source fungus to allow the movement. It crouched and clambered, the Core watching through its keen eyes, making a measure of the youth that strode through the fungi.  
Average for their species; black hair bound up, face free of ink as expected, sharp deep-blue eyes wary and thoughtful…and there was that spark that the Core had sensed. There was that _look_ it remembered, that _look_ it could almost feel again if it had its own body to feel with. It had been so long…   
The youth passed beyond what the little animal could see and the Core withdrew, humming a soft note of anticipation-curiosity-longing-hesitation. A few of its vines rustled in a nonexistent breeze, sending little clouds of particles whirling through the air. 

* * *

They stilled again, ears pricking up and curving forward-to-side-to-back to try and catch where the sound came from. Either they’d imagined it, the Core was still messing with their brain, or there was _definitely_ something near them. Or possibly some combination of the three, and they didn’t know which was the most worrying. But why worry? The Core would not hurt them. It protected their people. It helped them, it wouldn’t hurt them. Right?  
Yet the skin-crawling unsettled feeling lingered. Their ears twitched. This was…not pleasant, but at least the illusions had stopped as far as they knew. Now it just felt like they were being watched…like the Core was waiting for them to do something. But what?   
Their tail reached up to coil around their wrist, the tendrils tangling with their fingers just long enough to squeeze comfortingly before they let it hang down again. They chose to continue on, they could just choose to go back. They could choose to just stop where they were. It was fully within the realm of possibility. But even as unsettled as they were, their curiosity still held strong. They wanted to know more. They wanted to find out why the Core felt _familiar_ in a way they couldn’t name. So they squared their shoulders, pulled their courage around them like a cape, and continued onward.


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kasti = KAH-stee  
> Alagos = AH-lah-gohs

It wasn’t a voice they could hear, no, it was more than that. They could _feel_ it, down to their marrow and all the way to the tips of their hair.   
_Welcome, little Worldwalker. I’ve been waiting for you._  
Their tail picked up a pebble and rolled it around in its tendrils. “I’m not surprised.”  
The mass of light-darkness-colours-warping-air-and-land before them hummed, one of the weeping vines from a nearby giant fungus lifting and hovering a few hairs-breadths from their face. _I didn’t make myself very subtle, to be fair._  
It was…amused? They couldn’t quite tell, but they were confident in that guess. “Why were you waiting for me?”  
_You are a Worldwalker._  
“I’ve never-”  
_But you are one. …what are you called, little Worldwalker?_  
“…Kasti.” It was just their youth name that officially they’d abandoned the moment they began this Trial, but the names they’d picked out to use as an adult weren’t really ‘correct’ either…not yet, anyways. “What should I call you?”  
The Core hummed again, and a few weeping vines danced around them in a way that made them feel like the Core was particularly hesitant to touch them.   
_Core suffices; it is what I am and not what I have been._  
They nodded slowly, ears twitching. “I feel like I should be offended.”  
It seemed to laugh, a flood of amusement washing over them and some of the weeping vines rustling. _Worldwalker is not a name, and your reasonings for giving me the one you abandon are fair. But, Kasti, I have a request for you._  
“Will it mess with my Trial?” They caught their tail in one hand and tucked the end into their belt.   
_Undoubtedly._  
They frowned, ears going back. “What do you offer in return?”  
Weeping vines gathered and twisted, slowly taking the form of a Xevar made entirely of foliage. _I can offer many things, but it is for you to determine their worth._  
Eyes narrowing in thought, the youth crossed their arms, tail untucking from their belt to swish behind their legs. “And what is it you ask of me?”  
The vine-Xevar took a step forward, holding out a hand, the glowing holes where eyes would be shining bright. _Merely that you become my vessel for a time and allow me to feel again as I have not in countless cycles upon cycles._  
…they knew this story. They _knew_ this story. “And you ask me because I’m a Worldwalker and therefore the only one who can.”  
_Precisely. Of all I can offer, it is yours to choose._  
Curiosity and interest that was purely their own stopped them from turning down the request. They came this far in because they wanted to know what the Core was. What better way to know truly than to share a mind? And it wasn’t like their Trial was ordinary anyways…if they had died, they would have woken up back in their bed, and there was no protocol for that sort of thing. Worldwalkers were too few. What could it hurt to learn more, to just for a short time _be_ more? To prove that…that it wasn’t some kind of curse. Just because they could not stay dead did not mean that…  
“What are your offers?”  
The Core hummed, the vine-Xevar’s ears pricking up. _Knowledge, experience, skill…_ It trailed off, but the potential for more hung thick in the air.  
They let out a slow breath. “Skill is mine to earn in my own right. Experience the same. Knowledge I would accept, to the degree that it does not impede what I have just said.” Their eyes locked on the glowing holes in the vine-Xevar’s face. “I want to be confident in what I am. I want to not lay awake at night wondering why me, wondering what _purpose_ is there for me to never stay dead. And…” They hesitated just a moment. “I want to learn what I am actually capable of _beyond_ never staying dead.”  
Another hum, low and thoughtful, as the vine-Xevar cocked its head to one side. They waited silent and patiently impatient for the Core to speak again, to give them an answer.   
_There is nothing I can do to change the way that others see you, Kasti._ A trickle of faint amusement-empathy. _But that isn’t what you asked for, is it?_  
This was a test. They were absolutely sure of it. They picked up a pebble with their tail and tossed it to one side. “No, it isn’t.”  
The vine-Xevar seemed to smile, as much as it could considering it had no mouth. The air thrummed with something like delight. _I accept your terms, little Worldwalker. Confidence I can give you, learning I can teach you. It extended a hand. The conditions are decided._  
“The bargain is struck.” They took the vine-Xevar’s hand and the world went cyan.

* * *

It had almost forgotten how it felt to _feel_. It did not forget anything, but it had almost forgotten. It closed Kasti’s eyes and drew in a deep breath, lungs and ribs expanding to permit a gentle flood of hot air that it let out again immediately in a rushing sigh. Muscles and tendons shifted beneath its vessel’s skin as it stretched, slowly getting used to the confines of a proper physical form again.   
Weeping vines wrapped around its vessel as it strode through the forest, running fingers and palm and tail-tendrils over everything it could reach and marvelling in the sensations. It had _missed_ this so much…  
_Core, what are you going to do now?_  
Was that what it felt like for Kasti when it had spoken in their mind before? Interesting. Time to test out their vocal cords, then. It remembered how to speak with a mouth, of course it did.   
“I am going to teach you what you can do, little Worldwalker.”

* * *

They had no idea _whatsoever_ how many cycles had passed by the time the palisade of their home citadel drew into sight again. Their muscles ached and their brain was sore, but they felt more alive than they could ever remember. More alive…and sure of themself. The Core had followed the decided terms exactly, even though - as it had mentioned before it released them - it had wanted to give them more. They were happy with what they’d received.  
One of the gate-guards ran off as they approached, and they waited an appropriate distance from the palisade before she returned, their clanhead in tow.  
“Who approaches the gate of this citadel?!”  
They raised a fist straight into the air as if in victory. “One who left a youth and returns otherwise!”  
Their clanhead leaned forward slightly, bracing their hands on the rail. “What are you called, no-longer-youth?!”  
“I am Alagos, the Chosen!” Chosen by the universe to be Worldwalker before their birth, and chosen by the Core to be its vessel if only for a time.   
“Enter, Alagos of Clan Morevel, and look upon your home with new eyes!” Their clanhead spread their arms wide for the briefest moment before turning and dropping down out of sight.  
Alagos grinned and strode through the opening gate, head held high. Now that they had completed their Final Trial, even if it took longer than usual, there was only one things left before they were truly and completely an adult. Their first tattoo.   
A half-cycle later Alagos lay as still as they could, half of their face numb to the pain of the needle-and-ink marking out the shape they’d picked out. It was small and simple, a drooping droplet with a crescent beneath, hanging down from the corner of their right eye, but small and simple was what they wanted. The bigger, more complicated tattoos could come later when they had more experience to base them off of.  
Head full with thoughts of their abilities and the stories the Core had told them of when it was a Worldwalker, Alagos began preparing for a trip the moment their healing tattoo would allow them, sewing tunics and skirts in layers and gathering materials. The Core had warned them that many of the worlds were empty but for animals for leagues upon leagues upon leagues, so Alagos was going to be as ready as they could be…just in case. Oddly enough, very few asked them what they were preparing for or why, but they explained as best they could to any who did ask, not wanting to worry anybody.  
Then the time came. They were as ready as they could be. They awoke with a shiver up their spine and dressed in the tunic and skirt and legwraps they had set out before sleeping with near-trembling fingers and tail-tendrils. Breakfast was a quick affair. Goodbyes were…not so quick, but Alagos was both too excited to leave and too apprehensive of _entirely new places and maybe entirely new people_ to be much bothered.   
They shouldered their pack and strode out of the citadel with a tune in the back of their throat and a gleam in their eyes. The Core told them to create the portal where there was no danger of anyone accidentally stumbling across it, just to be safe. So, _logically_ , they dug into the side of a cliff and closed off the entrance.  
As they made the last preparations for the portal, Alagos wondered in the farthest reaches of their mind if this was something they really wanted to do. Of course, the answer turned out to be yes, because they were determined and they were curious and they could make their own choices. They lit the portal with a click of flint and steel, and a silver tear in the very fabric of the universe melted into being before them.  
With a deep breath and a jaw set with purpose, the Xevar Worldwalker stepped through the tear. 


End file.
